


to finish the thaw

by addandsubtract



Category: Brick (2005)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brain regains consciousness, his head is throbbing, and his left eye is swollen shut. His throat tastes like blood. His first thought is, <i>I guess this is what it feels like to be Brendan</i>, and he almost laughs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to finish the thaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kansas42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/gifts).



> hello hello lovely kansas42! I've always wanted to try writing about these two, so thank you for giving me the opportunity. I hope this fic is something close to what you were hoping for! there were plenty of places to go with your prompt, so I hope this serves. ♥

**1.**

When Brain regains consciousness, his head is throbbing, and his left eye is swollen shut. His throat tastes like blood. His first thought is, _I guess this is what it feels like to be Brendan_ , and he almost laughs. It’s possible that he’s a little hysterical, or maybe concussed.

“You got something to chuckle about, four-eyes?” 

The voice comes from the doorway, the gruff muscle who clocked Brain right in the face, not looking any more pleasant than he had when Brain had tried to back out of the lab in the science building and stutter his apologies. His hair is pushed up in the front like he walked into a wall. Brain’s already working to place him – prep, maybe, or a rusher. Frat guy. Brain’s only keeping up with the big players on campus out of habit. College was supposed to be big enough to blend, stay out of trouble.

Brain is just grateful he still has his glasses.

“Inside joke,” Brain says, trying to sound tough, but he isn’t, really. He’s done plenty of legwork but it’s Brendan who takes the beatings and deals out the wit. Brain watches, with his Rubik’s Cube, and his dog tags, and eyes blinking owlishly behind his thick lenses. He knows things – he doesn’t do them.

Which is not going to do him a lick of good right now.

“Stuff your inside joke where the sun don’t shine and keep your mouth shut. I can put you down again if I need to.”

“Yeah,” Brain says, “I know.” He fights the urge to laugh again. He’s not even supposed to be here. He doesn’t have anything this guy’s crew needs. Which means, more or less, that he’s screwed.

 

**2.**

Brain gets home late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, making it up the stairs to the apartment at 9:15 on a good day. Most days it’s closer to 9:30. The walk from campus is a short one, but after dark Brain takes the long way around the park. He’s not asking to get mugged when he has his laptop on him, and he needs his laptop if he’s going to pass his Criminal Psych final.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only days Brendan beats Brain to the apartment, which usually means there’s pizza or Chinese waiting when Brain pushes the door open, steps into the entrance way, and locks both the knob and the deadbolt.

“Hey, Brendan, how was your day?” he tries, leaving his bag by the door and slumping down onto the couch. It’s a hand-me-down Brendan picked up somewhere, and Brain sinks into the cushions like half of the stuffing is missing. There’s a pizza box on the coffee table, and Brendan has a slice in his hand – sausage and green pepper. The old standby.

“Status quo,” Brendan says. He recently cut his hair short, and his ears look vulnerable. Brain still thinks he looks good – better, maybe, than he did before. “Gaining some insight into the criminal mind?”

“You could say that. Mostly just case studies, so far.” Brain spends most of his time in class reading ahead in the textbook, but it’s not too bad.

Brendan hums, and takes bite of his slice. Conversation over.

 

**3.**

It’s Tuesday, which means that Brendan isn’t going to expect Brain home for three or four hours, depending on how long Brain was out cold. He doesn’t have a watch, and the muscle took his phone so it’s hard to tell.

There’s commotion in the hallway, an argument, and the muscle takes a step back, turns toward the noise. Brain takes the opportunity to take a look around the room. It makes him feel a little dizzy, and his head is killing him.

He’s definitely in a dorm, but it has to be one of the houses on the fringe of campus reserved for co-ops and frats. The room is too big for anything else. The twin bed in the corner is made semi-neatly, and there are posters crookedly taped on the walls – Green Day, Kanye. From the view through the window, Brain guesses he’s on the second floor. He’s not tied up, but they have him stashed against the far wall, in the slice of space between the desk and the corner of the room, just next to a closet. The only exit other than the door is the window, and Brain has never been athletic enough to pull that off. He glances up at the desk, and sees a duffle bag stashed underneath, a stack of four laptops on top – one of them is his, he can tell from the scuffs on the edge near the charger port. They must’ve gone through his bag.

Definitely too many laptops for one person. Brain thinks about that, and the scene he’d walked into in the science lab – freckled kid pushing his glasses up on his nose, face red with anger or maybe fear, Brain’s muscular friend from the hallway, standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest. It’s something. Ransom, he’d say. Holding term papers hostage for cash. But he’s been moving too much, and between the swollen eye and the dizziness, he isn’t thinking his best. Could be there’s something he’s missing.

“Why are you keeping me here?” he calls out. His head still hurts. He’s not sure this gambit will work – he’s no actor – but it isn’t like he has much to lose. “Let me go home. I didn’t do anything!”

The brute turns back toward him, away from the argument and back to Brain. “We’ll see. Not my call.”

Brain wishes he could make out some of the words half-shouted from down the hall. He’d be willing to bet they’re about him. “Look, I’m supposed to be home already, let me just tell my boyfriend I’m okay. He’ll call the police if I don’t show. He worries.”

“Hey, Brent, get your ass back down here,” a voice calls from further down the hallways, and the muscle – Brent – pauses. He pulls Brain’s cell from his pocket.

“Tell me his name, and I’ll text him.”

Brain thinks that over. He and Brendan have some codes left over from Jer, but mostly they were meant to work in the other direction – Brendan telling Brain covertly when to call the bulls, or when he was in too deep.

“Name’s Brendan,” Brain says. “Tell him I got caught up.”

Brent just nods, and then closes the door when he leaves. There’s the click of the lock. Brain hopes that the code holds. He hopes Brendan remembers.

 

**4.**

Brain thought they’d drift after high school. Hell, Brain thought they’d drift after the thing with Emily. Brendan spoke maybe six words to Brain between Jer and Emily, though to give Brendan credit, that’s more than Brendan spoke to just about anyone else. Brain doesn’t blame him for it and never did – things were shitty after Jer. But they were even shittier after Emily, so Brain expected, without bitterness, that Brendan would head to the portables and Brain would eat his sandwich in the library and that would be their last hurrah. No goodbyes necessary.

If Brain wanted something else from Brendan, well, no one was the wiser.

Instead Brain headed off to Stanford and Brendan spent maybe six weeks in community college back home, trying to appease his parents, before showing up on Brain’s welcome mat with a bag slung over one shoulder and his mouth pressed into a straight line. 

“Your mom gave me your address,” he’d said, instead of _hello_.

“She didn’t tell me,” Brain said. “You need to lay low?”

“Something like that,” Brendan said, and when Brain pulled the door open all the way, he took a step inside.

Brain didn’t ask, and still hasn’t, because what went down between Brendan and his parents is private, but he hadn’t minded Brendan imposing. Brendan never asked nicely for much of anything, and he’d thanked Brain exactly three times. Somehow it meant enough that Brendan had shown up – had still thought of Brain as a safehouse. 

Brain’s apartment isn’t huge, and Brendan is still sleeping on an air mattress in the living room, but it’s cheap enough for them to afford, even funded, mostly, by Brain’s work-study job at the library and Brendan’s string of part time gigs. Brain gets some money from his mom, and they scrape by. Brain’s heard a little about how Brendan spends his time, but nothing detailed – temp work, some of it, some weirder things, like the week he spent in a food truck or the brief span of time he worked as a hospital janitor on Wednesays and Fridays, mopping up blood and puke. No details, though. Brendan doesn’t really talk about much.

 

**5.**

Brain is half-dozing when the door opens again. Brent strides across the room and hauls Brain up by one arm, tugging him out into the hallway and down the stairs. Brain is, despite himself, glad for the support – he isn’t sure he’d be much up to standing, otherwise. There are four people sitting in the common room, and Brent pushes Brain into an armchair next to the entrance to the kitchen. Three huge guys are sitting thigh to thigh on the couch, one of whom was definitely in the classroom with Brent, and the last is set apart – sitting cross-legged on another chair, this one with its back to the front door. He’s slightly slimmer, with his hat backwards on his head, face impassive. The one to watch out for, then.

“It’s nothing personal,” the guy on the chair says. “You walked into something you shouldn’t have. I’m sure you can understand our position, here.”

“Not really,” Brain says. “I want to know how you plan on keeping me from pressing charges. Assault. Kidnapping.”

The guy shrugs. “Could kill you. Any reason we shouldn’t?” He gets a couple of quick glances from the couch, surprise. Brent shifts his weight.

“Marco –” Brent starts.

“Shut up,” the guy on the chair – Marco – snaps.

And the thing here is – Brain hasn’t seen any weapons. No one on the couch looks like they have a gun. Brain has no reason to think that this crew isn’t just small fries holding laptops for ransom to fund their blow and beer. But this isn’t an op, and he hasn’t done any digging. He’s flying blind.

He wonders what Brendan would do in this situation – Brendan pulled himself out from under Kara, graduated without getting dirty. Part of that is a cunning that Brain doesn’t have, quick thinking and a mind for angles. Part of that is a lack of care for how much he might get hurt.

“I don’t think you know how to get rid of a body without getting caught. None of you seem smart enough for that.” He manages to keep his voice firm, even if he feels a little nauseous. The trip down the stairs was not an easy one.

This crew seems like more muscle than brains – a goad like that would get him seriously hurt if they knew what they were doing. He needs them to leave him alone long enough for him to think his way out. He’s having a hard time keeping his head up.

Marco seems to make a decision. “Brent, take him back upstairs again and make sure he doesn’t make any trouble. Chad, give me the kid’s phone, I have a call to make.”

If Brain were stupid, he’d smile. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t struggle when Brent tugs him up and toward the stairs.

 

**6.**

Brain leaves early Mondays and Wednesdays, because if he doesn’t get to his Psych 101 lecture with time to kill, he’s relegated to squinting from the back row, and his eyesight is already bad enough as is.

Brendan is still asleep when he creeps out of his bedroom and tiptoes into the kitchen. For someone so on edge, Brendan sleeps soundly – he doesn’t even stir, mouth slightly open in sleep, fingers twisted into the comforter stolen from Brain’s childhood room. He looks a little less troubled while asleep, though not burden-less. There are still bags under his eyes, and his fingernails are chewed down to the quick.

There are days when Brain thinks about how Brendan took the bus seven hours to get to Brain’s apartment, and how Brendan never worried that Brain would throw him out on his ass. The same way he never worried that Brain would rat him out to the vice principal over Jer, or Emily. He thinks that makes them friends, but if he’s being honest, he finds Brendan almost as hard to read as everyone else does. He can pick out Brendan’s reactions sixty percent of the time, statistically speaking, but he still doesn’t know what Brendan might do if Brain kissed him.

He thinks about that sometimes. Like when he’s making himself a cup of coffee, gathering his schoolbooks into his bag, and watching Brendan sleep. He doesn’t do it, though. He’s fine with that.

 

**7.**

The commotion comes earlier than Brain expected. Hoped might be a better word – Brain thought it was more likely than not that Brendan would come for him, but it’s not as if either of them had given the scenario much thought.

Brain did have the chance to check the window – it’s possible he could make it down without breaking his leg, if he’s careful. He’d rather not resolve things that way. He does still have to go to class tomorrow if he’s not too concussed to make it.

The shouting from downstairs is getting louder. There’s a crash, probably someone knocking over furniture. Time to go, then.

Brain pushes himself to his feet, still wobbly, and staggers to the closet. He’s banking on Brent, in the hallway, being too distracted by the fighting to be paying much attention to him. He grabs the duffle bag from underneath the desk, stuffs the laptops stacked on the desk into it, and slings it over his shoulder. The blood rushes to his head when he stands, the skin around his eye throbbing. He grabs the lamp from the desk in one hand and yanks until the plug comes loose. It only takes three tries, but he has to put his hand on the wall to support his way to the door. It isn’t locked, and he pushes it open a crack, peering through the gap – Brent has his back turned. Someone screams from downstairs. Not Brendan. Brendan doesn’t scream.

Brain hoists the lamps, and brings it down, hard, on the back of Brent’s head. He goes down like an anchor, not even making a noise of pain. Brain drops the lamp onto the carpet with a dull thud, and leans against the doorway for a moment, catching his breath.

He hears footsteps on the stairs, and prepares to make a final push.

“Using me as a diversion, huh?” Brendan’s nose is bleeding when he turns the corner, and he has his hand out, like he can tell Brain’s about to run. It hovers in the air, uncertain, for a moment, and then he sticks it into the pocket of his sweatshirt, rocks back on his heels.

“Yeah,” Brain says. He lets his head fall back against the doorframe. Relieved to see Brendan, hopped up on adrenaline with nowhere to go. “Did it work?”

“Fairly well. The rest of the goons got out of my way when I knocked out the skinny one.”

Brain huffs a laugh. Brendan’s got a knack for heading straight to the top. There are sparks going off on the edges of Brain’s vision. Brendan frowns.

“Hell of a shiner you’ve got,” he says.

“Hell of a concussion, too.” Brain takes a deep breath. “Can we go home? This afternoon sucked.”

“Yeah,” Brendan says. He grabs the bag from Brain and pulls the strap over his head. “C’mon.”

 

**8.**

Weekends where Brain doesn’t spend the majority in the library doing his reading and writing papers, he spends on the couch with Brendan, watching movies. Brendan’s really into film noir. The funny thing about it is that Brendan is a movie talker – he doesn’t talk about much else, but he’ll talk about movies. He starts to pick up old VHS tapes from the video rental place around the corner that looks like it’s about to go out of business, and they watch _The Maltese Falcon_ , and _Gilda_ , movies Brendan’s already seen and Brain never has.

“It’s the next scene that makes it,” Brendan says, hands steepled in front of his face, leaning forward. Brain has spent more of the film watching Brendan watch it, but he turns back to the screen anyway.

“Did you guess the ending before it happened?” he asks.

Brendan is quiet for a long time, and Brain listens to the movie dialogue without really hearing it. Just a feminine tone waxing and waning, a sharp increase in pitch and then descent. Outrage, and then fear.

“No, not the first time. But the second time through, I could see where everyone was. Put it together, like a puzzle.”

Brendan is staring straight forward, and Brain sees the light flicker over his face, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. His throat moving as he swallows.

“That’s like life, isn’t it? More of it makes sense in hindsight than it does when you’re living it.”

Brendan glances at him, quick, out of the corner of his eye. Most days Brain would look away, busy himself elsewhere, but today he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel like it.

“Yeah,” Brendan says. “I see what you mean.”

 

**9.**

Brendan grabs Brain a bag of frozen green beans from the freezer, though it’s probably too late to do much about the swelling. Brain holds it over his eye, and sits down on the couch, glasses folded up in his lap. The blood is almost dry under Brendan’s nose, flaking off, and he dabs at it with a wet paper towel. After a moment, he sits next to Brain.

It’s dark out, and Brain’s missed his entire lab. He desperately wants to sleep, but Brendan’s leg is twitching and he still hasn’t taken his shoes off. Like he might leave at any moment.

“You have to help me find out whose laptops I have,” Brain says. “So I can give them back.”

“I can handle that.” Brendan tosses the paper towel, pinkish with blood, onto the coffee table, and touches Brain’s shoulder. Brain jolts, unused to the contact, but turns when Brendan nudges him. Brendan takes the bag of green beans out of Brain’s hand and touches his cheek, making a tsking noise as he looks at the bruising.

“Think they’ll come after us? Retribution for the slight?” Brain holds himself very still, and lets Brendan touch him. His heart is beating much too quickly.

“No,” Brendan says. “They’re not smart enough for that. They’ll take their beating, and if they don’t, I told them I’d get them kicked out of school. It would be easy enough. I’m sure we could find a couple people they ripped off.”

Brain thinks about the freckled kid in the lab earlier. “Definitely.”

Brendan is quiet for a second, and Brain tries not to move and remind Brendan that he still has a hand on Brain’s face, thumb pushing over his cheekbone, the very bottom edge of the bruise around his eye.

“They called you my boyfriend on the phone,” Brendan says, casual, like he’s reading off a grocery list. “’If you want to see your boyfriend again’ and so on.”

“Yeah, I –” Brain shakes his head, and Brendan’s hand slides down to his neck, the collar of his shirt. “I needed them to think you’d care enough to show up, and ‘roommate’ doesn’t have the same kind of urgency.”

“Ah,” Brendan says. His palm is rough and warm on Brain’s skin, and then he pulls it away, stuffs both his hands in his pockets. “I would’ve come either way.”

It’s more than he’s ever bothered to say before. Brain smiles, despite the way it pulls at his black eye. “I know you would have. I just needed them to think so too.”

Brendan nods. He picks Brain’s glasses up off of his thigh and hands them to him. “You’d better make up a good story for class tomorrow,” he says.

Brain slides his glasses on over his nose, and everything snaps into sharp focus. Brendan’s mouth is softer in the corners than usual, like he might smile. “I’ve got it covered,” he says.

 

**10.**

Brendan skips school for two days after Emily and Laura and the Pin, letting things die down, but on the third day, he meets Brain in the library early. Brain is reading _The Awakening_ for his third period English class, but he still looks up, startled, when Brendan sits heavily in the chair across from him and holds out a hand. Brain hands him the Rubik’s Cube, watches while he twists it up, and then takes it back. He wasn’t expecting this kind of one-on-one meet now that the deal was done.

“You’re here early,” Brain says. His fingers move on automatic, picking out patterns – he’s good at that, patterns. Math, and people. Habits. The Rubik’s Cube doesn’t stand a chance.

“Thought I’d check in, make sure everything shook out okay.”

Brendan looks less wan, and the cuts on his face have mostly scabbed over. He looks alive, at least, like he’s not liable to collapse at any moment. Brain lets himself feel relieved, even though he knows it’s not his place to, really.

Brain pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Well, Laura’s out, as expected. She won’t do time, because her parents are rich, but she’ll have to find another school, and I’d guess starting over won’t be easy. Were you at the memorial for Emily?”

“Yeah,” Brendan says. “I came in late.”

And left early, probably. “I thought it was nice.”

Brendan shrugs, and Brain mentally writes that at the bottom of the list of things they don’t talk about. It’s lengthy.

“Kara came out clean, but that’s not a surprise. Everyone else is buckling down and waiting for the school year to be over.”

“Yeah,” Brendan says. His hands are bunched into fists in the pockets of his sweatshirt, Brain can tell.

“I wouldn’t expect trouble with the principal. Not for Laura, not for skipping class. Everyone knows how you were with Emily.” Brain pauses. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

And they don’t – it means enough that Brendan is here talking to him, instead of shutting everything out the way he usually does. Brain doesn’t need much more than a few words and a quiet presence across the table.

Brendan nods. “You did good, Brain,” he says.

“Yeah.” Brain shrugs. He tucks the completed Rubik’s Cube into his briefcase. “I’ll wake you up for first period, if you want to take a nap.”

Brendan slumps down in his chair, balancing his chin on his chest. He yawns. “Thanks,” he says. He closes his eyes.

“Don’t mention it,” Brain says. He watches Brendan’s glasses dig into the skin of his nose, and then turns back to his book.


End file.
